


Even the Divine Ones Fall

by olivemartini



Series: Infinity War Saga [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Infinity War, Infinity War spoilers, Parental Tony, it's about THAT scene guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 02:57:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14535171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: The lead up to THAT scene with Peter and Tony at the end of infinity war.Actually summary will be up once I don't have to worry about spoilers.





	Even the Divine Ones Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Infinity War spoilers are ahead

When Aunt May first finds out that he's Spider-Man, they talk.

It wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.  Peter had had this conversation before, by himself, in his head.  He's practiced how he might tell her while talking to the mirror in the morning, when she's still asleep in the other room, and each time, he hadn't even been able to choke the words out without feeling the certainty of how this will hurt her.  He can see the way her face crumples, how she sinks down into the chair or onto the cold tile of the kitchen floor because her legs can't take the weight of her anymore, how she looks at him with tears in her eyes and forbids him to do it, begs him to stop, and for the first time in his life, he won't be able to do what it takes to make her happy again.

 _You should have known better,_ he thinks, when she finally does find out and all that happens is that they sit across from each other on their worn down living room furniture for a long time, her just staring at him.   _You've seen what she can bear._

And he had.  Peter knew that she was strong, and maybe that was part of the reason for not wanting to give this burden to her, this worry, this potential pain.  She has lost her sister, her husband, she has carried him from rock bottom and built them both a home when he thought it hadn't been possible.  He hadn't made it easy for her, but he had never made it hard on purpose, before.

"So you're the.."  She takes a deep breath and stares at the lamp, which Peter knows is how she tricks herself into not crying.  He turns from her and stares down into his hot chocolate instead ( _which is much too hot, now, because he got bit and little sensations have become big ones practically overnight and he still isn't always sure what will hurt, so this is more scalding than soothing, but he will not set it down and give her any sign that things are different, not here, not now.  He will be the Peter she knows for as long as he can._ )  "The Spider-Man guy.  The one that flings himself off buildings."

There was no point in lying.  There was really no point in her asking the question, either.  They both know the truth.  "Yes."  He lets go of the mug and rubs his palms over the soft fabric of his sweatpants instead.  "That's me."

"God."  She is crying, now, bent over at the waist with her head between her knees.  It's with a noticeable effort that she pulls herself back together.  "And the Stark internship?"

There are so many lies.  That's what the two of them are noticing now, all the nights he did not come home by curfew because he lost track of the time, the feeble excuses he gave, the reason for the sudden silence between them, and the worst, that night he came home covered in blood and grime and had to tell her he was mugged because he could not stomach the truth, and she was hell-bent on the police station, except for the fact that the bruises healed before they got there and he told her it  _must have just been the dirt, Aunt May, I don't know what to tell you.  Sure hurts, though._

He hates himself.

"It was this."  He clenched his hands into fists and then released them, one of the calming techniques that Karen had taught him to do when the sensory overload got too much and he cannot escape.  Peter had the suspicion that Tony had entered them into her coding after his last visit.  "The Spider-Man thing.  When I went to Berlin, it was to,"  He can't make himself say it.  It doesn't seem like the truth.  Here, he is not Spider-Man, he is only Peter, the boy who eats more food than she would have thought possible and makes complicated lego figurines, who holds her hand when he finds her crying over Uncle Ben and watches Hallmark movies by her side without complaint.  He's not sure he's ready for the two worlds to come together.  "We were fighting Captain America.  He needed all the help he could get.  And I got a suit out of it, which was cool, and-"   _And it saved my life a lot since then,_ but he doesn't say that.

There's silence, where she just stares at him, and then because he can't help himself and has been just  _dying_ to tell someone, he bursts out with, "I stole Captain America's shield.  It was pretty cool."

Aunt May starts laughing.  It's the kind of laughter that leaves you unable to do anything else, with her shoulders shaking and lungs heaving and eyes streaming, and she reaches out to him, pulls him to her, and even though he is so much stronger than her now, Peter let's himself be led.  By the time they are on the floor, huddled together in the kind of embraces they used to have after Uncle Ben's death, she is crying again.  "You could have died."  She is choking on her own breathing, the sobs bursting out of her like it is the only thing she has left, clutching to him like he might disappear if she took her eyes off him, like water through her palms.  "Oh my god, Peter, you could have died."

 _I could have,_ he thinks, because for a while this was all fun but now, after the whole nightmare on the beach, these powers have begun to weigh him down more than lift him up.   _I could have fallen from a building with one misplaced strand, I've ran into burning buildings and my powers don't protect me from that, I've been buried under buildings and felt myself ripped apart when holding a ship together.  I could have died._

It only takes him a moment to flip through them all, but just as sudden was the twitch of his hands, the bump under his sleeves that was the webbing buried in his jacket.  He can feel the strength in his limbs, the power in his chest, like a vibration that doesn't go away.   _How could I die?_ He thinks, and it's only much, much later that he recognizes this for the naivity that comes with youth and not a fact of life.   _I'm invincible._

"Nah, Aunt May."  She is still clinging to him.  He wants her to let go.  "They can't kill me."  Something must have been in his voice, some self assurance that wasn't there before, because her grip loosens.  "I'm Spider-Man."

It's strange, that he thought that would be enough to protect him.  He knows better now.

 

 

 

It's better, with Aunt May knowing who he is.

He doesn't have to hide, and there is none of the guilt from lying that had made a home in his stomach these past few months, and at the end of the day, she is there with a warm plate of food and open arms, waiting to hear all about it.  And Peter tells her, for the most part, when it is good, on the days where it is all triumph and no fear- the girl he saved from those muggers, how he threw Flash in the dumpster just because he could, that he tracked down a lost dog for a little girl and talked an old man out of jumping off a building.  It's like if he keeps telling her all the people he saved, she'll wake up one day and realize that this is something he has to do, that the possibility of saving all those lives outweigh the risk of losing his own.  

They don't ever get to that point, and Peter tries not to be disappointed, because he never did think it was likely.  He'll take what he can get, and if her knowing the truth means that he sees the worry crowding her eyes when he walks out the door, or that her breathing gets a little shaky when she sees the new bruise on his skin that is already starting to fade, or that he has to see the worry and doubt flicker over her face when she watches the fall out that the accords mean for super powered people ( _torn between fear and pride, like she wants to scream from the rooftops that Peter is hers but knows it will only bring them both into danger_ ).

"You can't ever tell anyone who you are."  There is nothing paranoid or overstated about her fear tonight.  Tonight, there is a report on the news that is still pounding in his ears, and he can see the flickering shadows of the tail end of it on the wall, about how a young girl with powers in some town he never heard of walked into a burning building and dragged everyone out, held the ruins up until the firefighters could really check that everyone had left.  For a while, she was a hero, but then over the course of the past few weeks, she became a public menace even though she had done nothing but exist, and the people ( _the normal people, the ones she had saved, they stood before her and screamed like savages with the fear on their face disguised as justified rage, the age old tale of burning anyone that threatens your humble existence, tearing away all things different_ ) had dragged her out to the middle of town square and tore her apart.  In his mind, Peter can hear her screams reverberating in his head like they are his own.  "Do you hear me?"  Aunt May shakes him, sending his teeth rattling and his neck snapping.  It's the first time she ever came close to laying a hand on him, which is how he knows that this time, the danger is very real.  "Don't breathe a word of this to anyone.  Not the people you save, not your friends, not the people you trust.  Do you hear me?"  He doesn't want to, but he does, and this is a new fear, that the people he is trying to protect might turn on him.  "You are not safe as long as you keep doing what you are doing."

"I was just trying to help people,"  He chokes out, but the fear is clawing at him, because now he is wondering who might be the first to turn on him, if there is really something that Mr. Stark's reach cannot protect him from.  "That's all I wanted to do."

"I know."  She smoothes his hair back from his forehead like she used to when checking if he had a fever.  "But not everyone thinks like you do."

 _Some people are mean,_ he hears, and there is also the echo of that last conversation, where he promised her that he could not be hurt, that he was invincible.

The words ring hollow in his ears, and it feels more like a lie than ever.

 

 

"Jesus, kid."  He is sitting across from Mr. Stark, spinning around a wheely chair while he bends over the suit.  "What did you do to this thing?"

Peter just shrugs and shovels more of the Chinese that Ms. Potts had ordered him into his mouth.  He had come here straight from a fight, calling Aunt May to let her know where he was going and Happy to pick him up, and he was still aching all over from the impact of the fall.  There was footage of it all playing on the wide screen television over their heads, so there was no need for him to actually answer.

"His claws tore it up."  There were marks all over his arms and torso where they dug past the suit and into his skin.  Peter hadn't felt pain like that in the while, sharp and biting.  The feeling of so much blood soaking his suit had terrified him.  "Or was it talons?"

Mr. Stark isn't amused.  He just looks tired.

"You have to be careful."  He says, and Peter does not make any promises, even though he remembers the day that Tony had told him how responsible he felt for Peter's well-being.  "You're not going to be able to withstand everything they throw at you."

Peter swallows and grabs for the next container.  They've had this conversation before.  "I have to,"  He hears himself say, and there is a weight on those words, making them hang heavy between them for a few moment.  "No one else is able to even come close."

Mr. Stark stares at him, and then sighs.  "You're going to die young, kid." Peter isn't able to figure out if it was intended to be a joke.  If it had been, it fell a little flat.  "Just do me a favor, and make sure I go first."

(Peter had just smiled, he remembered.  Like it was a joke and not a certainty, like he still thought that he was never going to be pulled down to the height of a normal human.  He had powers no one else did, after all.  Why shouldn't that make him burn brighter than everyone else, even if it wasn't for as long?)

 

 

 

 

The thing about everyone telling you that you're going to die when you're only sixteen is that you don't quite understand what they mean.

Peter had known what it means to have the people he loved die.  He's lost his parents, and he's lost Uncle Ben, and that had been a sort of pain he never wanted to feel again: where his chest rips open and every part of him is torn out,  where there is nothing inside your head but a howling, and then eventually the pain fades, the howl morphs into the steady drumbeat of your pulse, and there is nothing but numbness.  He had known that, but he had not known what it means when you reach out and brush fingers with death, voluntarily, but now he does, and he remembers what it means to be really, truly afraid.

He knew he might not be able to do it. He knew, as he stood on the opposite building and watch that girl hanging from the balcony ( _he doesn't know how she got there, nevermind, it doesn't matter_ ) that there would be a possibility that this time, Karen would not have a solution, that the webbing would not hold, that there would be no Ned or Happy or Mr. Stark to come through at the last minute and save him.  There was only him, and that girl, and the crowd of spectators watching below.

They hadn't seen him yet. He could turn around, and walk away, and no one but him would have a clue that he could have stopped it.  He could go home, and Aunt May would hold him, and he could call Mr. Stark to confess and hear someone tell him that you can't save everyone.  That sometimes, you have to know when to walk away.  

But he couldn't walk away, because so far, he has not turned away from the idea that when you have these abilities and don't try to stop the bad things, then they are happening because of you.  That this one, this girl, will be falling because of him.  And there wasn't really a choice, when you put it that way.

"Karen."  His voice is shaking.  He tries to steady it.  "What are our chances?"

"Not good, Peter."  Her voice is quiet, too.  She is a model of himself, Peter knows, so she will not tell him to back down, but just this once, he wishes she would.  "Nor for you."

A chance, then.  "But for the girl?"

"the girl would be alright."  Peter is already climbing to the top of the balcony.  "If we do it right."

He dives.  He dives, and grabs her by the hand, and they fall, plummeting through the air to the cement until he hears Karen's voice in his ear, faint under the covering that was the girls screams, telling him to shoot the webbing now.  Peter does, and it's a hail mary kind of motion, the kind that probably won't work but still could, and he almost cries when he sees the string catch, feels it pull taught.  It is not enough to stop him before he hits the ground, back first with the girl on top of him, but it is enough to lessen the impact.

To keep him alive.

There is a face over top him, the features waving in and out, like they're made of water.  He knows they are talking to him, cursing, and fingers are coming to pry off the mask, maybe to check if he is okay, or maybe to be the one who cracks the case of Spiderman's identity once and for all.  Either way, he stops them, reaching with the last bit of his brittle strength to grab at their wrist and push them away.

"I'll heal."  He coughs out the words.  The breath has not come back to him yet.  "Just give me a minute."

He lays there a long time, long enough for a paramedic to come and hold his hand, tell him it was a very brave thing he had done, that the girl was going to be alright.  Her name was Francine.  She was eight.  Her friend had dared her to jump from one balcony to another, and as it turned out, she couldn't do it.

Peter thinks about her.  He thinks about dying, blinked out of existence, fading away from memory without anyone ever connecting his name with Spider-Man, and realizes that he does not want to leave the minds of the people he tried to save that quickly, that he wants to stake some claim on this world.  He realizes he does not want to die, which he must have always known, and also realizes that if this were to happen again, he would do the exact same thing.  Heroes don't get to have happy endings.

"Good,"  He tells her, or maybe he thinks it.  Peter's not really sure, at this point.

 

 

 Ned is filming.  Peter is talking.  Or getting ready to talk.  Whatever.

The camera light is blinking at him.  the lightbulb overhead is buzzing.  The suit is too tight, for once, like it might be strangling him, and in his hands, the mask feels like something dangerous.

Peter is saying good-bye.

"I'm Spider-Man."  It's not as exciting to say as he thought it would be.  "My name is Peter Parker, from Queens, and I'm Spider-Man."  

 _Take that, Flash._ He wants to say, and even considers it, but this will be his last moment to claim some piece of this world for his own.  For some people, it is the first time they have ever heard him speak.  

"I fought with the Avengers."  He wants to say that.  "I thought I wanted to be one of them for a long time, but turns out, I'm good here, with all of you.  Just looking out for the little guy."

Ned is staring at him.  It was a lot to unload on your best friend, to tell him that you need to make a good-bye video announcing your identity for after you die.  For Ned, it's the first moment that Spider-Man became something dangerous.

"Some of you have met me.  Some of you have only heard of me.  And I just want to you to know -all of you, especially the people that know me as Peter- that I don't regret it.  That this is just something I have to do.  I don't want to-"  To die, he means to say, but he can't make himself say it.  "something happened, and I realized that I can't always promise that I'm going to be here, walking away from these fights without being hurt.  And if that happens, I just wanted you to know who I am."

He looks at Ned, the little blinking light.  He does not know how to end it.  "For the last time, this is Peter Parker, from Queens, saying good bye."

The light dies.  Peter throws the mask from his hands.  Maybe it's not heroic, to want credit, but he did not want to die with everyone thinking that he was nothing but ordinary.

 

 

 

MJ is talking to him, which wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that this time she is seeking him out as Spider-Man.

He's not surprised, because she had spent all week telling him her plan and badgering him about where he thought Spider-Man might be, considering he has the inside scoop from Mr. Stark's internship ( _which is actually a internship, now, on alternate Saturdays_ ), and even though he had made her promise not to go looking for him, here she was anyways.  

It was more annoying than anything, especially when he thinks about how stupid he sounds, taken off guard by how pretty she looked ( _and damn it, did she dress up for him?  She definitely brushed her hair.  So fricking annoying, that all the girls he likes end up liking Spider-Man instead._ ).  

Peter can't look her straight in the eye, and he can't really make himself talk to her how he would like, confident and casual and like he couldn't stop thinking about how beautiful she looks today, with the sunlight catching in her hair and her actually smiling, because he is afraid that she would recognize him by something that he hadn't thought to hide, like the way his hands are fluttering at his sides because he cannot stay still or a word choice or the way his voice turns up when he is trying not to laugh.  MJ would figure it out. She sees everything.

"Listen, MC-,"

He did that on purpose.  She doesn't rise to the bait, which is when he starts to think maybe she is smiling like that just to get an answer, and that makes him feel better for the other him, the one that cannot tell her how pretty she is and she only knows from the scholar challenge team.  

"I really want to help you, but I've got a lot of work to do, so if you don't mind, I-,"

He sees it before she does.  MJ's the one that always notices things, but she's too busy trying to formulate a response to being thrown off that she does not turn around, even as the car comes closer, careening off the road and into the sidewalk and towards her.  

The suit isn't activated.  Karen is quiet.  This is not Spider-Man, not really, this is Peter seeing one of his friends in danger and throwing himself in front of a car for them, the same he would before he had powers, only this time he has MJ pinned to his side and one arm thrown out to the car, crouched over her to shield her from the glass that is shattering around them, and when it's over, the car is stopped, the hood of it crumpled around his fist.  

They are only inches from the wall, inches from dying.  Inches from MJ being hurt, because she was the only one of them that would not walk away.  

Peter has to forcibly yank his hand out of the hood before he can turn to her, who is shaking, staring at him and the car and gasping the way she had been the one time Peter had caught her trying not to cry.  Peter wants to reach out to her, hold her, reassure her that everything was okay, but Spider-Man didn't have that right.  It was the first time he hated wearing the suit.

"Michelle." He takes her by the shoulders instead, picks a shard of glass out of her hair.  "Michelle, are you alright?"

She doesn't answer the question.  She never answers his questions.  "You could have died."  

"Yes."  He doesn't lie to her.  Peter never lies to her.  "But you would have lived."

"Would it have been worth it?"  It's reporter Michelle again.  The Michelle that over analyzes everything, who asks questions and figures out the answer even if you don't give her one.  It means she's okay, so Peter doesn't answer, just shakes his head and walks away.

"Hey!"  Her voice makes him stop, draws him back, just in case she is not alright.  When he does, he can see she's got that look on her face when she is trying to figure out a difficult equation, when things don't add up but she knows they have to.  "I never told you my name was Michelle."

Peter smiles, but beneath the mask, she can't see it.

 

 

 

By the time he becomes an avenger ( _knighted, actually, like it's a joke, but its not, it's real, it's terrifying, they're in fucking outerspace_ ), Peter is aware that he's going to die.

He had known it when he attached himself to that spaceship in order to find the magician guy, Dr. Strange.  He had known it when Mr. Stark had told him to trust him, to let go.  He had known it when he had the chance to leave and decided to stay, because he had sworn to protect people who couldn't protect themselves, and right now, Mr. Stark, the only super without powers that Peter had ever met, was one of those people, just a man lost in space.  And maybe he had known it back on that first day, when he woke up and tripped down the stairs and realized he was clinging to the wall.

It scares him, but its necessary.  It's what he came here to do.  He would die doing what he had always tried to do: protecting people.  And this time, it didn't matter if he wanted to walk away, there would be no way to hide from what was coming for them.  The only option for them all was to fight.

"It's going to be okay, kid."  They'd just met the Guardians of the Galaxy, whoever they were, and he and Mr. Stark had decided to put as much room between them as possible.  "I'll get you out of this."

He had his arm around Peter.  It made Peter want to cry, because Tony still didn't get it.

 _You're just a man in a can._ He thinks, and maybe Tony noticed, because he draws Peter a little closer.   _You're brilliant, and you're a hero, but you're only a man.  I'm more, and I'm here to protect you, even if you don't know that you need it.  Because you do, need it._

Peter doesn't tell him that.  He doesn't say anything, just lets himself lean into him a little, because it was cold in here, because there were strangers with powers that he didn't understand, because everything was falling apart, because they were in outer space, because he was scared, because he was only a kid, because this was the last chance he might have.

If this was a movie, it would be the good-bye scene.

 

 

 

When it comes to actually dying, it's not as bad as Peter thought it would be.

It's almost like getting his powers, only in reverse.  A draining instead of a filling.  A tremble rather than the steady pulse of his strength running through him.

The feeling makes him stumble.  Peter's not proud of that, because when he imagined his death he always thought it would be something grand, a blaze of glory that would be burned into the memory of everyone who saw it.  Instead, he got this, him crying, stumbling into Mr. Stark's arms, knees sinking down to the earth and the fear that is swallowing him, holding him captive, and even though he knew it was coming, he still does not want to die.

"You're okay,"  Tony is telling him.  He holds him as they both sink to the ground, because he is only a man and cannot hold up Peter's weight.

 _I know,_ Peter wants to tell him.  He wants to tell him a lot of things.  About how this wasn't his fault, about how it didn't hurt a bit, how he tried to protect him and didn't want to leave him.  How if Tony had to follow, it wasn't scary.  And he also wanted to say other, less important things that he never got the chance to- the good bye that he would have to carry to Aunt May, how he liked it when MJ smiled at him, that Tony would make a great dad because he really does think Pepper is pregnant ( _there was an overhead phone call that she had made him promise not to tell Tony about on threat of dismemberment_ ), that Ned was the best damn man in the chair he could ever hope for.  That he does not want to die, but that there was nothing he would change.  That this was inevitable, even if it didn't happen here, now.  

This- the crumbling inside him, the numbness going up his legs, the flash of memories flowing through his mind, like a touch of mercy to dull the horror- wasn't dying, exactly.  It was more like being unmade, and Peter wasn't afraid of it.  He had known this moment had been coming for a long time, but if it had to happen, he would rather not leave Tony here, all alone, when the whole reason he had come here was to protect him.

"I'm sorry," Peter says, because there is so much left to do and say and no time to say it.  

"I'm sorry,"  He says, because he had been convinced that they would win ( _because aren't the good guys always supposed to win_ ) and it turned out that they didn't.

"I'm sorry,"  He says, and it's because he is not able to stop himself from leaving, not even if he tried.

This time, Peter was not afraid.  This time, he was ready.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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